Learning a foreign language by cochlear implant users
Learning a foreign language is a special challenge for students with hearing impairments as it requires not only developing necessary strategies to learn all language skills in another language, but also overcoming specific perceptual and performance difficulties. The methodology of foreign language teaching to students with hearing impairments describes this process with reference to deaf and hard-of-hearing students of various ages who have various degrees of hearing impairment and who use various communication techniques. However, experiences relating to foreign language learning by people with cochlear implants have not been studied so far. These are students with unique characteristics whose hearing impairments are usually severe or profound and, at the same time, whose functioning is similar to the functioning of hard-of-hearing people thanks to their cochlear implants. It is assumed that their full inclusion in education in mainstream schools and social integration are possible.The article presents the issue of teaching the English language as a foreign language to students with hearing impairments who use cochlear implants (three case studies), especially in the context of the level of independent learning, beliefs concerning foreign language learning, foreign language classroom anxiety or lack of anxiety, and the scope of learning to read, write, speak and listen in a foreign language. In the study, a questionnaire designed by the authors was used as well as the scale FLCAS (Horwitz, Horwitz, Cope, 1986), autonomous scale (Macaskill, Taylor, 2010) and subscale BALLI (Horowitz, 1999).